Blink

the kind of fare then on television: it was edgy and political,
and it tackled social issues that the television of the day
avoided. Lear took it to ABC. They had it market-tested before
four hundred carefully selected viewers at a theater in
Hollywood. Viewers filled out questionnaires and turned a dial
marked “very dull,” “dull,” “fair,” “good,” and “very good” as
they watched the show, with their responses then translated
into a score between 1 and 100. For a drama, a good score was
one in the high 60s. For a comedy, the mid-7os. All in the Family
scored in the low 40s. ABC said no. Lear took the show to CBS.
They ran it through their own market research protocol, called
the Program Analyzer, which required audiences to push red
and green buttons, recording their impressions of the shows
they were watching. The results were unimpressive. The
recommendation of the research department was that Archie
Bunker be rewritten as a soft-spoken and nurturing father. CBS
didn’t even bother promoting All in the Family before its first
season. What was the point? The only reason it made it to the
air at all was that the president of the company, Robert Wood,
and the head of programming, Fred Silverman, happened to like
it, and the network was so dominant at that point that it felt
that it could afford to take a risk on the show.